


Practical Solutions

by FeelingCreature, NoShayminTrying



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Angst and Humor, Episode Related, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 07:05:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4253967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeelingCreature/pseuds/FeelingCreature, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoShayminTrying/pseuds/NoShayminTrying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike leaves the theater. Crow chases after him. Mike's fine. Crow doesn't really care anyway. Right? Right. (Based on the events from episode 819, Invasion of the Neptune Men)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practical Solutions

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place immediately after episode 819, Invasion of the Neptune Men, during which Mike attempted to leave the theater in the middle of the movie, and Crow chased after him and brought him back. 
> 
> While this fic can stand alone, it's also a companion piece to FeelingCreature's "Invasion." This one is coauthored by both of us because someone had the extremely unwise idea to let us stay up all night writing fanfic and analyzing MST characters. Repeating to ourselves it's just a show isn't something either of us is very good at.
> 
> ************************

At first, Crow hadn’t thought much about Mike's strange behavior. After all, it hadn't seemed all that strange.

When Joel had been on board, vanishing into the depths of the ship and isolating himself for hours on end had never been any cause for alarm. He'd always triumphantly re-emerged with some wacky gadget or absurd invention, beaming like a little kid and brimming with excitement at the chance to show it off. As a result, both bots assumed "vanishing unannounced for an indeterminate amount of time" fell within normal parameters of human behavior.  

Mike, however, had proven to be a far more social human from day one, so his increasingly common bouts of self-imposed exile, for increasingly extended periods of time, were fast becoming unnerving, especially once it became clear that his moods darkened after each one, rather than lifting. Today, things had taken such an unsettling turn that even Crow struggled to play it off.  

Running off to another area of the ship was one thing. Running off to an area of the ship with no oxygen was something else entirely. 

Mike had seemed okay in the theater, once Crow had convinced him to come back in.  But lately, Mike  _seemed_  to be okay a lot of the time, only to wander off mysteriously again, and later resurface acting disoriented, confused, or downright bizarre. 

According to Gypsy's latest scan, Mike was once again on the other side of the ship, alone, doing precisely nothing, just as he had been for the past several hours. Maybe Crow should just let Gypsy deal with it. After all, she was programmed to tend to the higher functions of the ship, and a malfunctioning human was a pretty high function. Besides, repairing malfunctioning humans fell outside the scope of his programming.

Then again, considering how well Gypsy had handled it the  _last_ time she thought their human was in danger, maybe it was safe to say such things fell outside the scope of  _her_ programming, too. Better not give her a chance to muck things up twice. 

"Well?" Gypsy asked, impatience tinging her voice.

"Go slobber over a picture of Richard Basehart" Crow muttered to himself.

"What was that?"

"Uh, I said go clobber the controls in the basement."

Gypsy stayed silent. Crow quickly ran through several scenarios in his head, calculating the odds of success, the odds of failure, and the odds of making himself look like a giant wimp, which also qualified as failure. Reasonably satisfied with his calculations, he laid out his instructions. "Okay. Kill the ship’s environmental controls. Or at least crank the heat way down. We might wanna keep the oxygen turned on and the pressure stabilized, or else Mike explodes into a cloud of juicy pink mist, which kind of defeats the purpose."

"What good will turning down the heat do?" Gypsy asked. "I don't think this is a good time to play pranks on Mike."

Damn dense purple lug! Did he have to spell everything out? It was bad enough he had to risk tipping his hand to Servo, but this was just embarrassing! "It's not a prank," he said plainly. "It's like...smoking a bear out of its cave. But different."

"Um, Crow, that would be the definition of a prank," came a voice from behind him. Servo. Crow didn't realize the little twerp had come into the room.

"I wasn’t even talking to you, Servo." Crow snapped back, defensive walls springing into high alert. No way Servo was going to catch him with his proverbial pants down, doing embarrassing things like showing concern. Besides, it's not like he gave that much of a damn anyway. It was a purely strategic move - If Mike got himself killed or went insane, then Pearl would win, and who knows what kind of nutcase she'd send them next. Crow rolled his eyes. "In short, Servo, Mike’s being an idiot, and he needs a kick in the pants to snap him back into reality." 

The real truth was that he didn’t want to leave Mike unsupervised. If they went to bed and left him alone all night, he might get some crazy idea in his head and wander off again, and get himself into who knows what kind of trouble. The guy could barely walk around without hurting himself even when he was in his right mind. With impaired reasoning, there was no telling what he might do without meaning to. Not that Crow cared, of course. He just didn’t want to have to clean up the mess.

Servo processed this for a moment, then fired off in the way only an annoying sibling can. "You mean you're worried about him and you just don't want to admit it. You know, if you'd just learn to express your feelings like I do, things would go a lot more smoothly around here."

"Oh, you mean like a wussy little cheerleader? Fine, Thomasina. I’ll just borrow some of those petticoats you like to wear under your hover skirt, and  I'll work on... "

"GUYS!" Gypsy's shrill rebuke interrupted Crow’s retort. Both bots fell silent. "Make up your minds. I've got work to do."

\----------------

On the other side of the satellite, Mike lay sprawled across a blue padded mat on the floor of the ship's makeshift gym, staring up at the metal grates covering the ceiling. Gypsy had suggested he get some exercise to clear his mind, but he hadn't succeeded in doing much of anything other than retreating back into his thoughts - it was all he seemed capable of doing anymore. 

His head felt like a dark, foggy maze these days. It called him in like a siren, promising relief, promising him that if he just ventured in a little bit deeper this time, he could figure things out and then it wouldn’t be so bad. But he couldn’t, and relief never came. Not so far, anyway. All he ever found were more questions that he didn’t even know how to ask. Fractured mirrors reflecting images he couldn’t put together. Cobwebs and dragons. Shadows on walls. The web of reality, always thin up on here on the Satellite, fraying even thinner, snapping quietly, string by string. Sometimes he almost felt like he could sit and watch them unravel in real time, see the little pieces float away so easily, like cottonwood seeds.

It only seemed like a matter of time before it all disappeared. 

Being trapped on a satellite orbiting Earth had been hard enough, but at least he'd been able to see his homeworld sitting right outside the ship's window every day, a green and blue beacon of hope waiting patiently for his return. All he had to do was figure out a way. Getting hurled to the far side of the universe, however, hundreds of years in the future, when Earth as he'd known it had long since ceased to exist… there wasn't much hope for anything now. 

There was hope of surviving the next movie, or evading Pearl for a day or two, but then what?  No long-term goal or escape in sight. Just an endless game of cat and mouse, getting chased through oblivion by a lunatic, a monkey, and a guy with his brain in a pan. It was all too much to handle, and adapting to this version of existence was proving to be a difficult, even impossible task. His mind seemed to take more and more liberties with his perceptions of reality in order to help him avoid a complete psychological break. Or maybe he'd already had one. Maybe he was having one now. Who knew. 

Plus there was the odd incident from earlier. He was touched that Crow had come after him when he left the theater, but how far off the deep end must he have been in order for Crow to risk showing concern, not only in front of him but in front of Servo? Naturally, the gold bot had put considerable effort into hiding any trace of genuine emotion, but to someone who knew him as well as Mike did, Crow was far more transparent than he realized. Besides, acid coating or no, Crow following Mike out of the theater to look after his well-being was a far cry from the belligerent, exasperated shout of "I’m gonna grab a stepladder so you can jump up my butt" that had taken place a scant hour before.

The problem was Mike couldn’t remember why he’d done it, or even what, exactly. That was happening more and more often. He remembered being in the theater, watching the movie - that horrible, horrible movie, full of the same gray nonsensical chaos replaying over and over again. It somehow managed to be utterly mind-numbing and offensive to all of his senses at the same time. One of the worst since Coleman Francis.

He remembered watching the movie, and he remembered getting up and leaving, but it had been like watching himself from far away. Observing the action but not privy to the reasoning behind it.  Like watching somebody else do it.  The fog in his mind had spread out to fill his surroundings, making it impossible to see or think clearly. It seemed that he’d been temporarily evicted from his mental processes while they made the decision without him. His mental self-preservation and his physical self-preservation couldn’t come to a compromise, and one had taken the other hostage. Thankfully, his physical self-preservation had fought back long enough for Crow to stop him from doing something he’d regret. 

Well, maybe he’d regret it. Not that Mike wanted to die - he really didn’t. But they’d been so close so many times in the past several weeks, that maybe he just wasn’t that afraid of it anymore. Maybe when it came - whenever that was, tomorrow or fifty years from then - it wouldn’t be so bad. But no, he definitely didn’t want to go yet. His mind, the part that didn’t seem to be under his control, wasn’t trying to get him killed; it was just trying to get away from the movie by whatever means necessary. Hard to say how he should feel about that.

Two things suddenly occurred to Mike. One was that he felt rather cold. The other was that, at this moment, Servo and Crow were most definitely yelling at each other, their voices echoing down the hall.  

Mike felt a presence in the room and looked over to see Gypsy, her single eye gazing down at him. "You might want to go deal with them, Mike. They're in Crow's room, trying to hook up the VCR."

Mike sighed and pulled himself to his feet, feeling somewhere between annoyed at having to break up another squabble and grateful for the distraction from his thoughts. The fact that the bots could still be fighting about such everyday things in the midst of all of this was both baffling and reassuring, somehow. " I got it, Gypsy ," he said, patting the purple bot on the head, then walking down the hall toward the sound of the rising voices.

"We're not watching Roadhouse AGAIN, Crow. If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a crush on Patrick Swayze."

Mike paused outside the door, listening to the bots shout back and forth.

"Oh, like you’d pick something better? Remember when you put on that stupid space documentary and then did that planetarium thing? I think Uranus is still sore from the probing."

Mike couldn't help smirking at the memory. He felt kind of bad for Servo in retrospect, but it  had  been funny. Still, best not to let the current feud escalate further. Tempers had been running high since they'd all left their pure energy state and re-joined the physical realm, and it was best not to let things get too out of hand.

Mike gently pushed open the door and entered the room. "What's going on in here?" he asked cautiously.

"Servo’s wants to explore Uranus."

"Crow's in love with Patrick Swayze." Both bots answered in unison.

Mike looked at the stack of VHS tapes piled on Crow's dresser and reached for one at random. Ghostbusters. "Hey, fellas, don't cross the streams," he said holding up the tape as both bots once again attempted to simultaneously insult each other. Momentarily distracted, Crow's eyes and Servo's dome turned toward him. "Whaddaya say we watch this one?" Mike asked.

He pulled the tape out of its case, fighting back a caustic laugh.  _What is this, Crow's movie collection commenting on my mental state?_  he thought to himself with a trace of dry amusement.   _Ghostbusters. Yeah, that about sums it up. Spooked. Surreal. Who ya gonna call?  Geez, Nelson, you know you've gone bonkers when you look at Ghostbusters and your first thought is a downer_ .  He popped the tape in the VCR and seated himself on the bed, reaching for a spare blanket that had at some point been used to build a makeshift fort. He pulled it around his shoulders as the temperature on the ship plummeted even more.

Rickety old satellite, he thought. The environmental controls must be malfunctioning again. Gypsy would take care of it before it turned into a major problem, but Mike was still relieved when the two bots joined him on the bed, the heat from their electronic bodies warming the  space  around him. 

At least he had his friends. Dysfunctional, immature friends, but he was sure glad for their company. And for their collection of non-horrible movies.

Mike rested a grateful hand on each bot's shoulder, and the bots responded in their usual ways - Servo snuggling into Mike's side, Crow staying exactly where he was, not shying away, but not seeking further contact either.  Mike had wondered on more than one occasion if Crow just wasn't the physically affectionate type and if he'd been intentionally designed that way, but he never pushed the issue. The two little robots were fascinating creations, but they were very much sentient individuals, and it wasn't his place to try and change who they were or demand explanations for their personalities. Goodness knows they’d silently put up with plenty from him already.

\----------------------

Crow noticed Servo immediately tuck himself under Mike's arm, as he usually did when they all had some downtime together. Crow wasn't entirely sure what to do. Like Servo, he'd been programmed to seek affectionate physical contact from human companions. Unlike Servo, he actually had an ounce of pride. But it *was* cold on the ship, and there was no harm in keeping Mike from freezing to death, especially after they'd already gone through the trouble of keeping him alive once, and then luring him out of hiding. 

Besides, humans were programmed to seek affectionate physical contact from their companions too, and it was precisely this programming that Crow had been relying upon in order to get Mike to stay in the room after he'd come wandering in to bust up the incredibly staged fight with Servo. Killing the heat system on the ship just provided a convenient detour around that pesky pride thing, for all parties involved. Mike would never ask for help, Crow would never openly offer it, and Servo was too self-involved to notice anything outside his own ego unless someone beat him over the head with it. So broken environmental controls seemed like the path of least resistance. 

Crow turned his head, paused for a long moment as he watched Mike draw the blanket more tightly around himself, then decided the hell with it and prodded Mike's shoulder with his beak. After a somewhat baffled pause, Mike hesitantly lifted up his arm, and Crow scooted under his elbow, leaning his torso against Mike's body and taking care to slam into him with a requisite display of playful roughhousing. "You humans are so fragile," Crow said, rolling his eyes. “You’re so high maintenance, with your warm-blooded mammalian circulatory systems and endothermics."

A small, bemused chuckle escaped Mike's lips and Crow felt the human shake his head just a tiny bit. Then a warm arm and accompanying blanket wrapped themselves around his shoulder, and the gold bot felt himself being scooted against Mike's side.

It was a perfectly logical, perfectly practical course of action. He  was  a convenient heat source. Not that he'd ever admit that "convenient heat source" was a role he'd sorely missed playing over the years, or that Mike's unsuccessful attempts at resting his chin atop Crow's head gave him pause or brought back any sort of memories that he may or may not want to deal with right now. The last human he'd been a regular heat source for had simply removed the spiky net in situations like this to save himself a stab to the jugular. After all, snuggling was not meant to be a blood sport - though Crow was definitely  not  snuggling with Mike or allowing Mike to snuggle him in any way, shape, or form. He was just being a sleek gold space heater. But whatever the case, blood was messy, and Crow wasn't in the mood for clean-up duty, so practical solutions remained the logical course of action.  

"Hey, Mike," Crow said a bit tentatively as he felt Mike's body shift uncomfortably due to yet another poke to the chin. "You might wanna just take my net off if you don’t want to gouge out your eyeball. That sort of thing can really ruin a movie watching experience."

Crow felt Mike's body shake slightly with the same silent, perplexed laughter as before, and then he felt a familiar, gentle tug at the top of his head. Mike set the gold net aside and pulled Crow onto his lap, looking quite like a child hugging a large, oddly shaped teddy bear. Crow felt Mike rest his chin atop his now-unadorned head.

He started to relax, then froze in alarm, once again remembering his all important mission to not look like a wimp. Terrified he'd just compromised said mission, he frantically cast his eyes toward Servo on Mike's other side, silently daring the other bot to comment. An acerbic retort was already half-formed in his mind when he realized Servo, small red body contentedly resting in the crook of Mike's arm, had exactly zero standing to say much of anything.

_It's a good thing we're all pragmatists here_ , Crow thought to himself, relaxing against Mike's chest and letting his eyes wander to the Ghostbusters logo displayed across the TV screen.  _And I'm not a wimp. I'm a problem solver._


End file.
